US broadcast news pioneer and CNN founder Ted Turner has died, the cable news channel announced Wednesday.
Turner launched CNN in 1980 and changed how news was consumed in the US and around the world by creating a round-the-clock breaking news format that reshaped television in the late 20th century.
The Ohio native built his media empire in Atlanta, Georgia. After selling CNN to Time Warner, he became a prominent business leader and philanthropist, investing in sports teams, supporting habitat restoration in the American mountain West and donating $1 billion (roughly €850 million) to United Nations charities.
No cause of death was given. Turner had been battling Lewy body dementia, a little-known neurodegenerative disease, since 2018.
US President Donald Trump praised Turner’s legacy on his Truth Social platform: “Ted Turner, one of the Greats of All Time, just died,” Trump said. “One of the Greats of Broadcast History, and a friend of mine. Whenever I needed him, he was there, always willing to fight for a good cause!”
Born in Cincinnati, Robert Edward “Ted” Turner III did not finish his college education at Brown University, having been expelled before graduating. He took over the family advertising business after his father took his own life amid financial problems.
Turner bought a string of radio stations and, in 1970, acquired a struggling TV station in Atlanta — his first step into television. Frustrated by not being able to catch evening newscasts at convenient times, he launched an all-news, 24-hour CNN to provide continual coverage.
“I was going to have to hit hard and move incredibly fast and that’s what we did — move so fast that the [broadcast] networks wouldn’t have the time to respond, because they should have done this, not me,” Turner said in a 2016 interview with the Academy of Achievement. “But they didn’t have the imagination.”
The 1991 Gulf War was a turning point for CNN and the news industry. While many journalists left Baghdad ahead of a US attack, CNN stayed and brought live images of the war’s outbreak to viewers — footage of anti-aircraft tracers and correspondents reacting to bomb concussions — marking the first live televised coverage of a war’s start.
CNN’s success spurred the creation of other 24-hour news channels, including Fox News and MSNBC, and inspired similar networks worldwide. Turner’s television holdings also grew to include TBS and TNT for sports and entertainment, Turner Classic Movies and Cartoon Network, among others.
Edited by: Rana Taha